How to talk about ethics and compliance at a cocktail party
Caveni Wong

Jungle Book and New Year’s Wishes for the E&C World
Caveni Wong

Over the past 15 years, corporate Codes of Conduct have gone from dense single-spaced text to colorful brochures of stock photos and snazzy graphic designs that span anywhere from 20 to 80 pages.

The better a Code of Conduct looks, the thinking goes, the better it can show the outside world that the company is serious about its ethics and compliance efforts.

But a good-looking Code does not always mean an effective one. While thoughtful design can be helpful, the real work behind a good Code of Conduct is how it is written, communicated, and adopted by employees to guide their day-to-day work.

We’ve seen a text and legalese-heavy Code of Conduct used extremely well because the CEO memorized important sections and personally reviewed them with new hires. We’ve also seen a beautifully designed one that touts trust and integrity as core values shortly before the company paid a 9-figure fine for bribery.

Below are suggestions that companies of any size can follow to get the most out of their Codes of Conduct:

1. Tailor it for the intended audience. Most professional Code writers know to set the right tone and write for an appropriate grade level. However, what’s even more effective is to match the terminology and language that the company already uses in its mission statement and other business communications; speak with key stakeholders to identify focus areas and to gain buy-in; and use realistic examples or other features to enhance understanding in those areas.

2. Make information easy to find, and don’t make it longer than it needs to be. Get your important points across and use content features to facilitate understanding, but don’t write excessive prose or use too many meaningless stock photos. Your employees will appreciate being able to find information quickly without reading or flipping through pages of fluff.

3. Provide the Code in formats and at locations that employees can find easily. Depending on your employee populations, this could be printed and distributed, uploaded on an intranet, presented on an interactive web page, or all of the above. It is more important that employees know where to find it than to stress over which format(s) to use.

4. Communicate to employees that the Code means business. Designing and writing the Code is the easy part; making sure it’s effective takes a lot more work than hitting “send” in your email. The communication plan should involve the CEO down to the first line manager. Ideally, managers would be provided with supporting tools such as a manager’s guide or discussion kits to help them serve as super-users of the Code throughout the organization.

5. Give the Code teeth. None of the above matters if those who violate the Code do not suffer any consequences. Employees value fairness. Treating Code violators equally regardless of position or status is essential to having a Code that works. As a real-life example, Ford fired the President of North America for behavior “inconsistent with the company’s code of conduct.” You can read about it here.

Depending on the maturity of your company’s ethics & compliance program, some of the suggestions may be more difficult to achieve than others. That’s OK. Strengthening the Code of Conduct, and the ethics & compliance program in general, is a marathon, not a sprint. Any effort invested will lead you closer to the ultimate goal.

Contact us to learn more about how Principle Compliance can help improve your company’s Code of Conduct:

• Authoring and design
• Interactive online Code development
• Communication planning and implementation
• Manager’s guide and discussion kits

Want a Good Code of Conduct? It’s Not About How Pretty It Looks.
Caveni Wong

What does an illegal football tackle in Japan have to do with ethical decision making? More than you’d think, as it turned out.

In a news conference as reported in a NY Times article, the offending player claimed that he was told by his coaches to “crush” the quarterback, with the goal of causing injury. He apologized for being “too weak” and not being “strong enough to say no” to the coaches’ order.

Lest you think that this only happened in Japan because of the cultural norm to obey authority, recall the central tenet of the movie A Few Good Men, in which two U.S. Marines followed orders against their moral judgment and led to the death of a fellow Marine.

In fact, following orders even when it goes against one’s moral judgment is so common that social psychologists gave it a name: displacement of responsibility. By blaming an authority figure, one can excuse him/herself from taking responsibility for the unethical conduct. It is one of many ways with which we practice moral disengagement – the act of distancing ourselves from the unethical conduct that we commit.

Moral disengagement is practiced throughout history in misdeeds and atrocities around the world, including the Holocaust. Below is a list of the many methods:

• Moral justification: the ends justify the means
• Euphemistic labeling: “borrowing” not “stealing”
• Advantageous comparison: someone else behaved much worse than I did
• Distortion of consequences: no one would even notice it; I don’t even know the victims
• Dehumanization of victims: those people are animals, they aren’t like us
• Displacement of responsibility: my manager made me do it
• Diffusion of responsibility: everyone does it
• Blaming the victim: they asked for it

The real danger of moral disengagement is that the perpetrator is not often aware that the action is unethical. Multiply that by whole teams, divisions, and management ranks, and a company could have a huge problem. Just Google “biggest corporate scandals” and you’ll find plenty of examples in which the companies’ misdeeds are enabled by tens, hundreds or even thousands of their own employees.

For a company to have an ethical culture, employees must not only know what the ethical standards are, they must also fend off temptations to morally disengage. This doesn’t happen magically. An ethical culture requires deliberate efforts to achieve. These efforts don’t have to be costly or complicated; they just need to be genuine and persistent.

Do you have any personal examples of moral disengagement?

Contact Principle Compliance to learn how we can help enhance your company’s ethical culture.

“My Manager Made Me Do It” and Other Excuses
Caveni Wong

Ethics and compliance professionals have long been aware that a policy by itself is useless. A policy is a simple and necessary first step to set the standard, but it’s the sustained efforts to implement and enforce the policy that leads to actual compliance.

A company may draft a policy, house it somewhere that employees can’t easily find, send a mass email announcement, then consider it “implemented.” This approach may be good enough to satisfy external stakeholders by having something to share with clients or auditors, but does nothing to impact behavior in real life. A sustained implementation effort requires time and resources beyond sending the occasional mass email, an investment that budget holders may not be willing to make. However, without such investment, it’s like establishing a destination but not providing the path to get there.

This happens in law as well. For example, in India, despite its Constitution and subsequent laws over many decades prohibiting discrimination, lower caste Indians are still attacked – beaten, killed, stoned – for wearing the wrong shoes, riding a horse, sitting cross-legged, or changing a name on social media, as reported several years ago by the BBC. Perpetrators often walk away scot-free.

In China, despite various agreements and laws since 1979 protecting intellectual property, enforcement has been (deliberately and strategically, some would argue) lax and uneven. Only recently, perhaps because international pressure has mounted and China has developed enough of its own IP to protect, enforcement is seen as improving.

Of course, having a policy or law is better than having nothing. But it’s only the first step if desired behaviors are the goal. Employees shouldn’t be expected to find themselves to the desintation on their own, and ethics & compliance professionals shouldn’t be expected to bushwhack a path. As corporations declare their strong values and ethical standards, they must also commit to the efforts it takes to support those statements.

What is your company doing to align behavior and culture with policy?

Contact Principle Compliance if you wish to improve the effectiveness of your company’s policies.

Updated from post first published on June 20, 2018

Just Because a Policy Exists Doesn’t Mean There Is Compliance
Caveni Wong